Tue, Sep 9, 2014

The Congress

Exclusive Area Theatrical Premiere

Friday, September 5 – Thursday, September 11

(2013) dir Ari Folman w/Robin Wright, Harvey Keitel, Danny Huston, Jon Hamm, Paul Giamatti [122 min; DCP]
In a parallel reality very close to ours, a middle-aged actress named Robin Wright (played by the real Robin Wright) is offered a devilish bargain. A movie studio will scan her likeness and personality so that she can live, forever young, as a movie star but she will be forbidden from performing in any way for the rest of her life and she will have no control over the roles that her digital clone takes. Under the advice of her longtime agent (Keitel), Robin reluctantly accepts the deal and turns her attention to her ailing son. Twenty years later, to re-negotiate the terms of her contract, Wright must travel to a bizarre, futuristic convention, “The Congress,” where reality is warped and animated fantasies invade the real world.

This stunningly creative and poignant film couches a scathing critique of over-commodification and Hollywood’s digital future in a phantasmagoric reimagining of Stanislaw Lem’s The Futurological Congress. In the remarkable animated sequence that dominates the second half of the film, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the Fleisher Brothers, Fantastic Planet, Looney Tunes, Ralph Bakshi, and Yellow Submarine collide into a psychedelic experience unlike anything seen on screen before.

“One of the most startling uses of the medium to come along in years… a wholly original and thoroughly surprising fusion of sensory overload and liberal philosophy… a conceptually fluid missive against the corporatization of storytelling… [a] spectacular achievement, an ode to wonders of cinematic invention.” – Eric Kohn, IndieWire

“Ari Folman’s genre mash-up ‘The Congress’ could use a freakier title, something either more appealing or appalling to go with the weird, sometimes wonderful visions flowing through it.” – Manohla Dargis, New York Times